First Olympic Games

Period

776 BC

Region

Europe

Category

Culture

The ancient Olympic Games, or the ancient Olympics, were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and one of the Panhellenic Games of ancient Greece. They were held at the Panhellenic religious sanctuary of Olympia, in honor of Zeus, and the Greeks gave them a mythological origin. The originating Olympic Games are traditionally dated to 776 BC. The games were held every four years, or Olympiad, which became a unit of time in historical chronologies. These Olympiads were referred to based on the winner of their stadion sprint, e.g., "the third year of the eighteenth Olympiad when Ladas of Argos won the stadion". They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC. Their last recorded celebration was in AD 393, under the emperor Theodosius I, but archaeological evidence indicates that some games were still held after this date. The games likely came to an end under Theodosius II, possibly in connection with a fire that burned down the temple of the Olympian Zeus during his reign.

Sources: Wikipedia — Ancient Olympic Games · CC BY-SA 4.0

Earlier and later events nearby

1. c. 1900 BCMinoan palace of Knossos
2. c. 1200 BCLate Bronze Age collapse
3. 776 BCFirst Olympic GamesThis page
4. 508 BCReforms of Cleisthenes and Athenian democracy
5. 490 BCBattle of Marathon
6. 480 BCBattle of Thermopylae

Who ruled this land

States that held this place in the historical borders data (Cliopatria). Years are approximate, as fine as the data's snapshots (every few years to a century). Tap to open the map for that year.